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Working Moms Are Fine for Kids

By Lisa Belkin August 3, 2010 4:47 pmAugust 3, 2010 4:47 pm

Eight years ago, researchers at Columbia University worried a lot of new parents when they concluded that children whose mothers left home for full-time work in the first year of life were cognitively delayed compared with one-year-olds whose mothers stayed home. (No, the study did not measure the effect of working fathers.)

That well-publicized finding probably led some women to stay home. But given that more than 60 percent of mothers work when their children are younger than 6, the more likely result of the research was to increase the guilt and stress of working moms.

Now those same researchers are telling mothers to relax. Their latest research — which appears this month in Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, follows the children to first grade. Titled “First-Year Maternal Employment and Child Development in the First 7 Years”, it confirms what the authors call a “mild” cognitive lag among children whose mothers worked during the first year. But it then goes on to conclude that other factors (benefits of having a working mother, if you will) offset that harm, meaning “the overall effect of first-year maternal employment on child development is neutral.”

In 113 pages, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Wen-Jui Han, and Jane Waldfogel of the Teachers College and College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia, analyze data gathered from 1,000 children across the U.S., as part of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care. It found that working mothers displayed greater “maternal sensitivity,” or responsiveness, toward their youngsters, had a higher income and were more likely to find higher quality child care. In the end, the effect on a child’s intellectual, physical and emotional development was a wash.

Because of this, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, lead author of the study, told The Washington Post that “this particular research has a positive message for mothers that the earlier research didn’t.”

Will that make the return to the work force easier for new mothers? Lillian Dunn wrote to Motherlode recently, asking why mothers are so hard on each other and give such scathing public advice. I heard from her again this week, just as this study came across my desk. She is about to go back to work at the New York City Department of Health, and she is struggling with the re-entry. She has another question. I told her I would pass it along.

She writes:

Tonight, I’m thinking about the end of my maternity leave. I have chosen to return to work and — much to my surprise — am rather sad about it. I grew up with a working mom and naturally assumed that would be the path I would prefer. But now, seeing my days fill up with meetings and program indicators rather than diapers and baby toys, I’m wondering if I haven’t chose poorly.

I’m trying to compose a letter to my daughter to tell her why I’m to go back to work, why I won’t be staying at home with her. I’m thinking about what her career choices will be, and praying that by the time she’s my age, raising her own family, that she will actually have a choice and — God willing — even some adequate paid maternity leave. I’m wondering what Alice will do when she is in my shoes.

For all those Motherlode readers out there: What would they tell their daughters or their sons the night before maternity leave ends?

About

We're all living the family dynamic, as parents, as children, as siblings, uncles and aunts. At Motherlode, lead writer and editor KJ Dell’Antonia invites contributors and commenters to explore how our families affect our lives, and how the news affects our families—and all families. Join us to talk about education, child care, mealtime, sports, technology, the work-family balance and much more